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• Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

I had no specific purpose for this square, but because it looked like it might be a player, I added it to a larger order from Lee Valley Tools. After unpacking the shipment, I nonchalantly placed it aside into the tool well of my workbench.

Over the next few weeks, I found myself picking it up over and over for all sorts of measuring and squaring tasks. This may be the best way to assess the usefulness of a new tool: leave it on the “bench”, like an extra player, casually go to it now and then, and as you become increasingly impressed with its performance, promote it to the starting line up.

Here’s how this tool earned its role as a starter for me. First, it is very handy – small and light. The clean graduations with a sensible height organization and the satin finish make it easy on the eyes. The scales on both legs start at the inner and outer corners and are the same on both faces so I don’t get confused or make errors. I generally prefer to visually split 1/16ths rather than use 1/32-inch gradations but it is helpful to have the 1/32nds on the small legs for fine work.

It works beautifully as a short hook rule, such as to check stock thickness. Also, either leg butts securely against a surface for accurate inside or height measurements. Overall, I like handling the “L” shape more than using a 6-inch rule.

When I evaluated it using a Starrett combination square as the standard, I found it far exceeded Lee Valley’s statement of accuracy. It was straight and square within 0.001″ over its full length.

And, it’s got a 38″ vertical leap and clocks 4.4 in the 40. Just kidding.

As for dislikes, I find the large relief on the inside corner to be unnecessary, and it prevents penciling a line all the way to that corner. (Veritas seems to like this inside corner design. I find it very annoying on their otherwise excellent saddle square.) Also, a flat square like this will be inaccurate if it is held so as to occupy more than one plane when checking a corner. This is not a criticism of this tool but just a reminder of the nature of a flat square and that it does not replace a regular square.

In summary, this little guy is a gamer, a go-to tool in the shop.

[This review is unsolicited and uncompensated.]

Author:
• Monday, July 25th, 2011

From among my habits of work at the bandsaw, here are some that you may find handy.

1- The yellow velcro band placed around the blade is a reminder to tension the blade before work. Starting up the saw with a loose blade is not a happy moment (yes, of course, I’ve made that mistake) but it could be particularly damaging to a carbide-tipped blade. The velcro is placed aside during work so replacing it when the work is done is a reminder to release the blade tension.

2- Much has been written about proper blade tension, but like all tool adjustments, the goal is good performance. The same blade used to saw 8/4 stock will very likely need more tension when it is used for a 10″ resaw. Whether cambering a plane iron, choosing a bevel angle for a chisel, or tensioning a bandsaw blade, it always pays to “close the loop” by using feedback from the tool’s performance to confirm or modify the adjustments. Wood density, blade cleanliness, and heat build-up are just a few of the variables that make it unwise to tension the blade without thought. 

3- After installing and tracking a blade and before going to work with it, it’s a good idea to close the doors on the saw, run it for just a few seconds, wait until it stops completely, and then open the doors to check the position of the blade on the wheels and make sure all is OK.

4- It is easier to follow a layout line when it is viewed with both eyes (binocularly). Sometimes the blade guard or the guide bearing assembly will block one eye’s view of the line, depending on where you position your head.

5- When bandsawing freehand, I always think, “Feed the line to the blade teeth.” This is just the opposite of handsawing and I often have to remind myself to maintain the correct mentality at the bandsaw after I’ve been sawing by hand.

6- The push stick (below) has a rare-earth magnet which allows it to be stored within easy reach on the saw’s frame. The hole is a reminder of which end has the magnet. The short saw kerfs at the front end of the stick, which accumulate as it is used, can grip the corner of the wood as the cut nears completion. The stick has a limited life, of course, so the magnet is in a removable cup.

7- Large sawdust particles inevitably accumulate on the lower tire despite the actions of the wheel brush and the wood plate below the lower bearing assembly. A paint scraper held lightly against the tire as the wheel is spun by hand quickly removes the debris. A “synthetic steel wool” pad such as Scotch-Brite can also be used.

8- The variable-pitch, carbide-tip blade from Suffolk Machinery is a big help in resawing. It also is great for preparing leg stock and any other straight sawing of thick stock. Below is a 10 1/2″ wide Claro walnut board from Northwest Timber which I resawed with this blade. One of the many reasons why the bandsaw is so endearing.

I hope some of these tips prove useful in your shop.

Category: Techniques  | Tags:  | 2 Comments
Author:
• Friday, July 15th, 2011

Yes, humble poplar. OK, this is not a species that is likely to evoke lust, but it is a good wood to love. It should not be overlooked for a supporting or occasionally major role in high-end work, as well as duty in utilitarian work.

To be clear, the species under discussion is Liriodendron tulipifera,whose common names include yellow poplar, and, with a bit more cachet, tulipwood and tulip poplar. This is distinct from similar woods: aspen and cottonwood (Populus spp.), willow (Salix spp.), and basswood/lime (Tilia spp.).

Friendly, inexpensive poplar is readily available. My local orange-themed home center carries plenty of dry, dressed 3/4″ thick boards, as wide as the 1 x 12’s pictured below, and sometimes thicker stock. At my local hardwood dealer, sound stock up to 16/4 is available because poplar dries easily and with minimal degradation.

Poplar heartwood is usually pale yellowish green after milling but eventually changes to light brown after exposure. Some boards have deep purplish, green, or other color mineral stain streaks in the heartwood. The sapwood is creamy whitish which tends to develop a tinge of tan. I’ve never seen figured poplar but maybe it’s out there somewhere. It is a modest wood that, in my opinion, is best appreciated for what it is. Attempts to stain it to imitate another wood, such as cherry, end up looking lame to my eye. An exception may be when it is dyed black (ebonized) for use as an accent wood.

Below, left to right: aged poplar, fresher heartwood and sapwood.

Poplar, oh, yea, I mean tulipwood, makes a great secondary wood in fine work. It is hard to find quartersawn, but rift grain for drawer parts and panels can be salvaged from wide flatsawn boards, as seen in the photos below. For novice woodworkers – and we’re all beginners to the extent that we explore and learn new skills – poplar is an easygoing wood that can still yield very nice results. It saws, planes, and glues easily. Its fine texture takes paint well.

 

For utility work, such as storage units, and for many shop fixtures and jigs, poplar is usually my first choice. I also use it very often for mock-ups.

Poplar is a fairly stable wood with tangential and radial shrinkage values of 8.2% and 4.6%, respectively, T/R is 1.8, and volumetric shrinkage is 12.7%, making it certainly more stable than sugar maple and the oaks. It is a light wood, having an average density of 0.42, and surface hardness less than walnut and cherry but greater than white pine. It would suffer as a heavy-use table top.

Surprisingly, though, its stiffness (modulus of elasticity) exceeds that of cherry and big-leaf maple, though it is no match for sugar maple or the oaks. In this respect, it is a better choice for bookshelves than pine, which is considerably less stiff. For its density, poplar has good strength in tension perpendicular to the grain, which produces resistance to splitting, about the same as cherry and big-leaf maple, and much better than pine.

For lots of woodworking jobs, poplar deserves consideration. And some love.

Category: Wood  | Tags:  | 2 Comments
Author:
• Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

This is really about efficient use of existing space. To actually make more space would involve things such as moving to a new building or knocking down walls – difficult options for most of us. So to make the most of what you’ve got, think beyond the square feet of floor space, look up, and think vertical and volume.

Loving wood as I do, my small shop was getting cluttered with the lovely stuff and I was no longer at ease in my little playground. After a few minutes of sitting on my workbench and staring at the walls, I began to discern where empty vertical space could open up after only minor rearranging.

I installed two inexpensive Portamate wood racks after being reassured by a structural engineer that the wall studs would easily take the 500+ pound loads. Instead of the shorter screws that came with the racks, I used 4″ TimberLok heavy-duty wood screws (and grade 8 hardened washers) since about 1 ½” of the screw length is taken up passing through the brackets and spacers. The top photo shows a rack installed in a small alcove that was previously underutilized.

Because most of my woodworking is not large scale work, most of the wood I have in storage has been crosscut to about 4 feet long or less. However, the capacity to store some long boards for a long time is still necessary. In the photo above, notice the two utility hangers toward the right, near the top of the wall. Without interfering with anything else in the shop, they make use of the space above the door to allow storage of boards 8+ feet long. The Portamate rack has also opened up more space for the scaffold-type rack that is below it (beyond the frame of the photo).

I am once again at ease in my space. This helps clear my mind as I am working and makes the work more pleasant. Ahhh, the shop.

Category: Tools and Shop  | Comments off
Author:
• Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

 

The yellow sheet, thumb-tacked to the wall near my sharpening bench, saves a lot of time and guesswork. On it, I’ve listed the primary and secondary sharpening bevels for each of my edge tools.

Writing or scratching this information directly on each tool is awkward and often hard to read. It’s much easier to keep this sharpening “recipe” list. It is written in pencil because I sometimes change the angles as I get to know the performance of the steel in a new tool, or if I prepare a tool for working different woods. It pays to observe the edge wear and feel of an unfamiliar tool, taking note of any chipping and the resistance of the tool in the cut, and account for these in the next sharpening. Thus, the recipe develops from knowledge of the type of steel and feedback from the performance of the specific tool.

I grind the primary bevel on the Tormek, setting the angle from the recipe using Tormek’s proprietary gauge. I prefer to grind to just short of the tool’s edge which avoids unnecessary clean up on the coarse/medium waterstones. With the exception of most knives and some carving tools, I do not like the Tormek’s leather wheel for honing.

The Kell bevel gauge is handy to check tools, particularly since the Tormek gauge can sometimes induce inaccuracy if a lot of steel is removed during grinding. Most of the time, though, I just work directly from the recipe and try to get back to woodworking as soon as I can.

Category: Tools and Shop  | 5 Comments
Author:
• Monday, June 27th, 2011

If your shop is large enough to set up a tennis court after clearing out all the equipment, you may stop reading here. On the other hand, if you’re like most of us and could use more shop space but are limited by the building, such as your home, where your shop is located, here is an approach that may help: overlapping space.

The volume of a major machine itself is much less than the space required to use it, which includes the infeed and outfeed pathways. Thus, the functional depth of a portable planer is not just the two feet of the machine, but is about 12 feet to plane a 5-foot-long board. By altering and coordinating the table heights of the machines, shop space can be surprisingly expanded by effectively overlapping the working areas of the machines.

The photos show the DW735 planer with an attached 3/4″ plywood platform sitting on a Workmate. The additional height raises the planer bed so boards will clear the table saw and the workbench, as demonstrated with a long straightedge. The second photo below similarly shows my bandsaw table is slightly higher than the table saw. 

 

Of course, there is a limit to what can be accomplished with this – everything cannot be higher than everything else – but it pays to strategically work out shop systems with this idea in mind. Some heights cannot be easily changed, such as my bandsaw, but others are custom made, such as the router table. All of my major machines are on wheels except the DW735, but some are easier to move than others, so this also must be taken into account. The walk-around space also is a factor, such as being able to freely get around the planer from the infeed to the outfeed end.

When working this out, use a long straightedge, such as a jointed board, because the slope of the table tops can vary surprisingly, even in a shop with a level floor. Using only a tape measure to compare heights will be misleading.

Each woodworker will have to work this out for his own shop requirements, but the main idea is to think not just of the plan view of the shop layout, but also of the vertical relationships. Therein, more shop space can be found!

Category: Tools and Shop  | 3 Comments
Author:
• Monday, June 13th, 2011

Look at the lovely curly maple above. #%$@! sticker stains – the shadowy bands of discoloration across the width of the board. They are seen at the regular spacing where stickers are placed in a stack of boards prepared for drying.

Whatever their cause, perhaps wet stickers and/or slow drying, they are common only in light species, especially soft maples, in my experience. The stains are not usually visible on the rough-sawn surface, but only after planing, and even then they may go unnoticed until the board is viewed from several feet away. The discoloration can penetrate surprisingly deep. Fortunately, in this board the discoloration is shallow and there is thickness to spare.

As evil as it gets, is honeycomb. I do not have a photo to share because I cannot stand keeping such wood in the shop. These are splits oriented along the rays in the core of the wood that reveal their hideous grin on the end grain after a board is crosscut. Honeycomb is basically an extreme form of case hardening caused by poor drying, usually in thick wood. I once brought a gorgeous 8/4 curly koa billet into the shop only to have my thrill doused to disappointment after crosscuting revealed extensive honeycomb.

Even common end checks can be tricky. Sometimes these can partly close, hiding the compromised wood that extends further than the open check into the length of the board. To be assured of using only sound wood, mark the location of a sizeable end check, then saw 1/4″ slices from the end of the board and observe where they break. When the slices are taken in sound wood, they can be snapped to break randomly, not at the location of the end check.

The two boards of curly red oak, below, are parts of batches that I bought at different times. They are both nice but the colors do not match. I will have to use them in different pieces or at least for different categories of parts in one piece.

In a perfect world, we could obtain all the wood of a species in a project at the same time from a single tree. The boards would be hit-or-miss planed to preserve thickness, reveal most defects, and allow for good color and figure matching. Skim planing and keeping boards organized by flitch are more work for wood dealers and add to cost, so, while available, they are not usual practices.

When new wood comes into the shop, I give it another once-over and then write on each board the date and moisture content as measured with a Wagner pinless meter. The boards get stored so air can circulate all around them. If the wood has particularly high moisture, is very thick, or is otherwise prone to end checking, I coat the ends with a wax emulsion such as Anchorseal 2. I then observe the wood for a few days to a few weeks, depending on the species, thickness, and initial MC, rechecking until the MC levels off.

When planning the parts for a project I think carefully before major crosscuts because those are usually big commitments. For thick stock, such as 8/4, I use a pin meter to check for any moisture gradient across the fresh crosscut.

So, while wood disappointments do come along, wood elations are much more frequent and they last a lot longer!

Category: Wood  | 4 Comments
Author:
• Friday, June 10th, 2011

When I design a piece, thoughts of the wood come early in the process. Sometimes, the inspiration from very special wood creates the energy to initiate a project. The form and the wood work hand-in-hand as nature’s gift of wood animates the design.

Yet nature can be cruel. Over the years, despite my continuous effort to learn more about and experience more wood, I have run into disappointments. Sure, I am careful picking boards at the local yard or consulting on purchases from afar, but sometimes the eye, judgement, or just plain luck fails in the quest for wood. It is wood, after all, and we have to take the good with the bad. Here is some of the bad.

The top photo shows compression failures in an otherwise great slab of figured redwood. These are thin, irregular fatal compromises in the cell structure of the wood across the grain. They lurk invisibly on the rough-sawn surface only to reveal themselves after planing. They may occur when the tree is felled or from severe weather stress. I have also seen them in bubinga and mahogany, both large trees.

Below is a close-up photo of another compression failure in the same board, showing a characteristic wrinkly cross-grain split.

Notice the raised left side of the 5/4 cherry, above. It is easy for twist to go unnoticed in the commotion of the lumber yard. The full width of this board would probably be less than 3/4″ thick after dressing because the twist must be removed from both faces. To retain more thickness, this piece can be ripped into narrower sections – safely on the bandsaw not the table saw.

Similarly, thickness can disappear in surprising amounts when flattening a long bowed board or a wide cupped board. More commonly than any other problem, failure to retain the desired thickness, width, and length while removing distortion has destroyed my plans for wood parts.

A distortion that I stay away from is crook, which is fortunately easy to see – the board looks like a level road with a curve. Crook is a tip-off to the presence of reaction wood which is produced by tree trunks that lean. The pith is typically decentered which makes the widths of the growth rings markedly different on each side of a flatsawn board. These boards can unpredictably shrink along the grain and distort oddly. They are incorrigible miscreants that belong in wood hell, also known as the fireplace. Severely twisted boards should also be rejected because they certainly harbor some weirdness, with which you do not want to deal, that made them twist in the first place.

Sometimes, the wood and the woodworker just don’t get along. With great anticipation, I once started working with some beautiful curly makore. Within hours my nose and throat were scratchy and I felt strangely unsettled. Assuming that I was allergic or otherwise sensitive to this species, I decided to avoid unnecessary risk and get this wood out of the shop.

I’m afraid there’s more disappointments coming up in the next post.

Category: Wood  | 8 Comments